A Dragon of a Problem with Big Fishing

[Zohnax]

The requirements surrounding Ruby Dragon are a prime example of an outdated concept for MMOs with a heavy reliance on RNG and the player's patience and perseverance.

The first requirement: The weather transition from Thunder to Clouds in the Ruby Sea.

This weather transition occurs less than a dozen times a month, with there being a total of maybe eight or nine for the month of August. That's extraordinarily limited for the "difficulty" of catching the fish, which I will address next. That is also just the windows themselves and not factoring if the player can make every single one of them considering they can be just about any time of the day, with many of them during the middle of the night or the middle of the day. For a game that leans towards a more casual approach to MMO'ing, that is something that leans completely the opposite direction.

The second requirement: The "difficulty"

There are several factors that make Ruby Dragon "difficult." The high escape rate of Ku'ers, that Ku'ers can bite themselves, the extremely low bite rate of The Ruby Dragon, and that The Ruby Dragon can escape as well.

When you put all this together, you get an extremely frustrating and defeating experience where the only component the player can rely on is little skill and a lot of patience and persistence. I understand the objective for Big Fishing is to have some challenge, but one that lasts for potentially months or years for some while others might get lucky and catch it in less, is not fun. I know of some people reporting they have attempted to catch this fish for over a dozen, two dozen, five dozen windows. (Please remember the limited number of windows per month, and then if they can make those windows.)

There needs to be an adjustment and future avoidance of significantly defeating criteria of Big Fishing. Personally, I would almost be okay with the distant windows if Ku'ers never escaped, because then you could use more Mooches for more chances to catch The Ruby Dragon. From experience, I average three Ku'ers over 20 minutes, not including any that get away. In the months I have spent seeking The Ruby Dragon and timing the bites with a stopwatch, I have never had a window go beyond 26 seconds. (Considering from my understanding and reports I have seen from others who have caught The Ruby Dragon saying that it bites starting around 30 seconds into a Cast.) It also is not that I have not had the patience for Big Fishing in general, I have caught almost all of the Big Fish in the game, including some of the more frustrating ones like Problematicus, Raimdellopterus, and Stethacanthus.

Something needs to be adjusted some of these Big Fish with their ridiculously distant windows and other requirements that make them unenjoyable.

[Espritduo]

Ku'ers mooching off of themselves is a good thing. If you're only getting three ku'ers in a window, you're doing something wrong. I typically was able to mooch a ku'er 3-4 times off of itself alone, which adds up to about ten potential Ruby Dragon bites per window, which is pretty good. They get away sometimes, but not *that* often. It took me about a month to get the Ruby Dragon back in the day, and because it was in actuality a month mostly spent doing other things while every once in a while dropping in to give the dragon a go, it wasn't really a big time sink. Stethacanthus was WAY worse simply because it has even more layers of RNG and there is much more actual time spent in trying to catch it than Ruby. And the big blues from ocean fishing were far, far, far, far more troublesome than either of these two.

Personally, I feel Ruby Dragon is fine. You pop in once in a while, fish for a few minutes, and then get back to doing other things for the day/week. If I were to ease up on the requirements for any big fish, it would be Stethacanthus's sculptorx2 requirements or the ocean fishing big blues' abysmal bite rates(combined with everything else involving them), which are all just pure life-sucking torture to get.

[ItMe]

I'm sorry, but this is the Fishing that they want.
Fishing is all about the RNG, so the boss fish are about interacting with uglier and more unfair RNG.
They've always been deliberately designed to have ridiculously distant windows and other annoying requirements and they've shown no indication that they're unhappy with this or that they have any desire to change it.

[Brightamethyst]

Agreed on the window lengths. I'm mostly fine with the crazy amount of RNG -that's kind of the point of big fishing- but there's a big different between a fish getting away and not even having a chance to try for it. Personally I hate tiny windows and distant windows more than low catch rates (and Fish Eyes, but that's a whole other issue.)

[Zohnax]

If you're only getting three ku'ers in a window, you're doing something wrong... They get away sometimes, but not *that* often. It took me about a month to get the Ruby Dragon back in the day, and because it was in actuality a month mostly spent doing other things while every once in a while dropping in to give the dragon a go, it wasn't really a big time sink. Stethacanthus was WAY worse simply because it has even more layers of RNG and there is much more actual time spent in trying to catch it than Ruby.

Blue Bobbit > Surface Slap Couerl Eel Snakes > Patience II > Cast > Powerful Hookset Ku'ers... there is not a lot of skill involved in that process. I generally try to prep an HQ Ku'er before The Ruby Dragon window so I get a chance at the start of the window. It reads to me that you got lucky within that one month you spent after Ruby Dragon and I believe I mentioned lucky people in my original post. Yes, I have experience Ku'ers getting away that much. If I had to eyeball-guesstimate, I would say close to 40-50% escape rate. But some windows, I just do not get that many bites at all, even after Surface Slap.

The only additional layer to Stethacanthus is the Fisher's Intuition buff from catching x2 Sculptors, which you go and try to Double Hook with Collect on so that you can gauge if there is adequate time left in the window to try for Stethacanthus or leave the window up until the next window which is often an hour, maybe a day later at most. However, there are clusters of Stethacanthus windows unlike Ruby Dragon. If you use the Carbuncle Plushy Fish Tracker website, you can click on the little calendar next to the fish and see the next ten windows. Steth has ten windows between the time of this post and Sunday at 6:26AM EDT. Ruby Dragon on the other hand has ten windows between the time of this post and September 10th. That is a span of 35 days. Again, I would be okay with the distant windows if there was significantly less Ku'ers escaping and a high Ruby Dragon bite rate or vice versa, but the problem is the combination of the extremely sporadic windows and the bite/escape rates.

They've always been deliberately designed to have ridiculously distant windows and other annoying requirements and they've shown no indication that they're unhappy with this or that they have any desire to change it.

I extremely disagree that all the windows have been "ridiculous distant." There is maybe a handful of Big Fish that fit that criteria such as Bobgoblin Bass, Suiten Ippeki, Duskfish. Also, if no one expresses they are unhappy with something, the developers will think it is fine. At the end of the day, the FFXIV Dev Team has shown great interest into what the playerbase thinks about the game and they try to adjust newer content accordingly.

[Espritduo]

Blue Bobbit > Surface Slap Couerl Eel Snakes > Patience II > Cast > Powerful Hookset Ku'ers... there is not a lot of skill involved in that process. I generally try to prep an HQ Ku'er before The Ruby Dragon window so I get a chance at the start of the window. It reads to me that you got lucky within that one month you spent after Ruby Dragon and I believe I mentioned lucky people in my original post. Yes, I have experience Ku'ers getting away that much. If I had to eyeball-guesstimate, I would say close to 40-50% escape rate. But some windows, I just do not get that many bites at all, even after Surface Slap. .

Eh, at the end of the day it still took me a month of fishing for one fish, so I wouldn't say I got lucky. If anything I got lucky with the amount of windows I had, not in the attempts themselves, which involved probably over a hundred ku'er mooches (you are chain mooching the ku'ers right? None of your statements really make that clear to me). I had a decent spread of windows in that month, and the lucky thing is that it was right before the infamous 2-month drought of ANY windows for the dragon that I caught it. If I hadn't gotten it on that last attempt, I would have been waiting nearly two months before I could even try again. That kind of window absence I would say is too much. I'd say getting at least 1-2 windows per week without any major droughts would be fine.

As far as stetha goes, you said it yourself, there are far more windows for it, so you spend far more actual time trying and failing to get it, which just hurts so much more because you feel like you're wasting time that could be spent actually accomplishing something elsewhere. I know all the tricks for catching it and used them freely, and it still took me two months of misery before I landed it. RNG will always be RNG and all that, and I wouldn't be opposed to easing the reqs on either fish, but dollar for dollar I found Stetha to be the more painful fish to catch, even if Ruby Dragon is technically "rarer" due to its lack of windows.

And let's be real here, it is a FREAKIN DRAGON we're talking about here. If there was any fish in the game that deserves to be "that one fish", a giant flying dragon that is apparently a mad auspice on the level of the Four Lords definitely fits the criteria.

[Zohnax]

(you are chain mooching the ku'ers right? None of your statements really make that clear to me). I had a decent spread of windows in that month, and the lucky thing is that it was right before the infamous 2-month drought of ANY windows for the dragon that I caught it. If I hadn't gotten it on that last attempt, I would have been waiting nearly two months before I could even try again. That kind of window absence I would say is too much. I'd say getting at least 1-2 windows per week without any major droughts would be fine.

RNG will always be RNG and all that, and I wouldn't be opposed to easing the reqs on either fish, but dollar for dollar I found Stetha to be the more painful fish to catch, even if Ruby Dragon is technically "rarer" due to its lack of windows.

I thought that chain Mooching would have been too obvious to list. There have a few times where I have had one or two chains in a window, but it has not been often and I am into my third month, and 17th or 18th window at this point. Although my primary focus in on Ruby Dragon in this post, the point can be stressed to include other brutal Big Fish requirements. One to two attempts a week is about the average I have noticed, but that is also assuming hitting every window despite the time of day. It can be extraordinarily more challenging being a working person or a regularly sleeping person. Say both attempts per week are during working hours and you are basically out of luck for another week or longer. Then compound the difficulty with hooking The Ruby Dragon between the Ku'ers bites and escapes along with the distant windows and that is a recipe for a very defeating experience when you spend 22 minutes a sitting involved with prep and 11 of those minutes trying for The Ruby Dragon itself.

I feel like a fish being this challenging during the expansion it is released on is fine, but once we go up 10 levels and a bunch of Gathering points, older Big Fish should get easier, so I agree with you there.

[Canadane]

I went months and months on the Ruby Dragon too, but I finally caught her.
While it's probably the hardest to reel in due to it's circumstances, I don't see a problem with it. It's not like all fishing is this difficult, and it none of it were this difficult it wouldn't be much of a challenge.

Though I do wish I could have put it in a fish tank.

[Zohnax]

I went months and months on the Ruby Dragon too, but I finally caught her.
While it's probably the hardest to reel in due to it's circumstances, I don't see a problem with it. It's not like all fishing is this difficult, and it none of it were this difficult it wouldn't be much of a challenge.

I am not saying there should not be any challenge, but rather the challenge is far too extreme. If you hit every almost every window for "months and months" that's pretty harsh for one fish. There is a thread on reddit posted today after someone finally caught their Ruby Dragon saying, "I've been at 203/204 for over a year now... ...But just now..." and they posted a picture of having caught it. If you read through the comments, there is a lot of similar sentiments. This person reports being after it for six months. Another person saying attempted often since 4.5 (when it released) and it escaped three times before they caught. Another still, "I've been hunting this since March with no luck."

If the Ku'ers escaped a lot less frequently or could not bite themselves, great.
If the Ruby Dragon bit more or could not escape, great.
If the windows were more frequent than averaging 2-3 per week, great.

Adjusting any one of these factors would make this fish a lot less punishing for a lot of people. However, the way it stands now is worse than HNM camping was in FFXI; which the XI Devs actually replaced some of the HNMs with force spawn items instead in some recent years.

[ItMe]

I am not saying there should not be any challenge, but rather the challenge is far too extreme.

Is fighting RNG like this really a "challenge" though?